Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

Buddhism, Science and Scientism 51
There is much discussion of the difficulties with neo­
Darwinian theory by biologists themselves, of which any
Buddhist who wishes to criticise Darwinism without
making a fool of himself should take the trouble to
become informed. A brief introduction is given in Randall's
book, where further references may be found.
The foundation of biology is necessarily physics. But
while biologists in general have yet to move into the
post-mechanist age, the discovery of Relativity and
Quantum Mechanics freed physicists from the crudely
mechanical ways of thinking prevalent in the nineteenth
century. As Merrell-Wolff 90 points out, "since 1896
physics has laid the foundation for mysticism with a
vengeance," and it provides no support for the materialistic
interpretation of Darwinism. Convincing evidence
of the similarity of the physicist's and the mystic's worldviews
is given by LeShan, 91 who presents many quotations
from the writings of physicists and mystics and
invites the reader to judge which is which. Physics has
abandoned the concept of things existing absolutely,
from their own side, and recognises that phenomena
depend very much on the observer and what observations
he makes. All the information a physicist has comes
through his sensory consciousnesses, thus he cannot
avoid being concerned with mind in the end. So weird
are the ideas of the physics of elementary particles that it
is not too surprising to find a theoretical physicist elaborating
a theory that electrons carry mind. 92 (However, this
approach will obviously not be able to account for memories
of past lives in a single chain, unmixed with other
individuals, as observed, so like most of the ideas of
theoretical physicists it will presumably be a dead end.)
Now, "There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and
that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves
standing-the truth that the present phenomenon of
consciousness exists." 93 How then is it possible that the
concept of mind as something more than the physical